This ending was, as expected, tragic. I don’t think there was anything redeeming about it. Desiree had wanted to change her world and for a while, she did. She lived in the big fancy house and got to wear beautiful dresses and , at the end of the night, she would kiss her prince. But her happiness was two-dimensional. This idea of fated love that she clung to never came to fruition. Danielle used her. She made him better and he was willing to sacrifice her health for his own. She gave up everything for a chance with him and he must have known. He wasn’t stupid. He knew she was a peasant; he knew he was her only chance. He must have known she would give up everything for him. And sure, he wanted to “keep” her, but how demeaning is that? Her sacrifice was treated as a show of loyalty from a pet to its owner. He owned her. He didn’t think she was good enough to marry; I don’t even think he thought she was smart enough to want marriage or maybe he thought her smart enough to realize marriage was an impossibility. The worst part of this whole situation is that she loved him or at least her idea of him. She was devoted to the idea of being a mistress of grand homme, of establishing herself as the wife of man from her fantasies. She was in love with part of him, and maybe he was in love with part of her too, but hers had encompassed her being. Her entire life became whatever he wanted for her, but he never could see her. That last day when Daniel got married, he looked out into the crowd and into her eyes and he didn’t see her. Her eyes, her soul, were indistinguishable to him. This great love that she became attached to was false hope that had been left alive for too long. It sucks because she gave her livelihood away for him and he gets to just turn his head away, get married, and be OK. She is heartbroken afterwards- not just because Daniel doesn’t love her, but because her dreams, her hopes,her connection with the gods, are not strong enough to get her out of this. This time it won’t work out. At this point, she’s starved with grief and this death of her hopes- the hopes that were the only things keeping her going, the only things keeping her standing- crushed her. Her death is not hopeful; it’s sad and it feels pointless and it makes me angry. The only OK thing about this entire situation is “the promised storm that broke with a vengeance.” To me, this is a Biblical flood that Agwe is going to use to land the final blow on the people who have further rejected his presence. I kind of want these guys to drown after they threw Desiree in the trash like garbage. They blatantly disregard the butterfly phenomenon. They only see what they want to see, what fits with what they’ve already thought. Maybe a flood will wash them clean of their undesirable ideas.
I think I might have missed a deeper message in this story because of my anger. I feel that my takeaways are a little pragmatic and very pessimistic. This book taught me that hope kills. Clinging to an idea instead of facing reality can crush your spirit, slowly depriving it of sustenance instead of ripping off the bandaid and letting it heal. But this book also taught me that you should be the one to define your dreams. Desiree, I feel, has been too affected by the opinions of others. She lets her belief in the gods dictate her actions, and then she lets Daniel string her along. She got caught up in other people’s nets and was tugged wherever the went. She played a pawn in her own story. The patience that she was taught to observe in the book is all for naught if you don’t push yourself along with your own will. Patience without a push will leave you standing outside a store waiting for someone to invite you in. It is you who runs the show; it should be you who opens the door. 
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